Rune Seeker

Across the ravaged battlefield – what was left of the once-an-oasis – the Elder Earth Elementals shattered into red dust. The roaring storm of power ceased, to reveal a blue sky above, and an eerie silence filled the space so suddenly it was more jarring than any loud sound could’ve been.

It was… over. They’d done it. Sort of.

Hiral dropped to his knees, legs giving out beneath him, while his leaden arms hung limply at his sides. Off to his right, Seena was the only one still standing, though Gran was likewise upright – even without legs. Only one of The Pack still remained, and Left was holding on to one of its spines as it dragged him towards Romin. From the looks of things, both of the double’s legs had been broken.

In his Party Interface, nobody was above fifteen percent health – though the Aura of the Mother of Flame was helping – while Romin and Yanily were both dangerously close to zero. Actually, without Seena’s aura, they may not have even been alive at all. Seeyela and Right were completely unconscious, their bodies splayed out nearly three-hundred feet away where the compressed water had tossed them.

“Can you get that knucklehead out of there?” Gran asked Hiral as she floated past him towards Romin, only wobbling slightly in the air as she left a trail of blood behind.

“I…” Hiral started, then steeled himself. “Of course.”

Actually, no, he couldn’t. His body wouldn’t respond to his requests. The solar energy moving through him was like sandpaper, but that was somehow better than the shape the rest of him was in. Runic Regeneration was working away on improving things, but it wasn’t being quick about it.

Which left him with one option – one he should’ve thought of as soon as he saw the wolf dragging Left. Bracing himself for the pain, Hiral quickly deactivated and reactivated Foundational Split. The shock of pain was a lot like getting dunked in frigid water, his whole body seizing up at once, and his chest constricting like it had forgotten how to breathe.

He would’ve simply fallen over if strong hands didn’t grab him and ease him gently to the ground.

“I’ll get Yan,” Right said, while Left dashed off to help Gran with Romin. “Why don’t you just stay here.”

“Was kind of my plan,” Hiral admitted.

Right gave him one nod, then the double was gone. A second later, a reverberating thump shook the oasis. The sound of something like a rockslide.

“Left, going to need you here,” Right said, an edge to his voice.

“Go,” Gran said. “These two are as stabilized as we’ll get them without more solar energy to work with.”

Lying on his back, Hiral heard Left’s hurried steps going to where Right and Yanily were, but he rolled his head to the side to look at the two sisters.

“How is she?” he asked into the party chat – even that grating through his body.

“Still out,” Seena said from where she knelt beside her sister. She’d managed to get the other woman’s eight-eyed helm off, and tacky blood coated face and hair. “One of her arms looks like how mine feels. Oh, I wish I hadn’t looked. They’re the same. No wonder it hurts so damn much. Gran?”

“Running on empty here, girlie,” Gran said. “Healing well and solar energy both. We might need to wait for Wule. Maybe that Yully girl if she can do broken bones.”

“Yanily will need it too,” Left said. “I’ve done what I can, but it’s not nearly enough.”

Hiral’s eyes went to his still-active Domain of the Sun+. With the Banner of Courage part of it, it’d be helping them recharge faster. The bigger problem was Gran’s healing well. Without anything to do damage to, she didn’t have the energy she needed to heal their worst injuries.

“What about you, Gran?” Hiral asked. “Last I checked, you had legs before.”

“I still have them,” Gran said. “They’re just… over there instead of right here. I’ll put them back on when I have the energy too.”

“You can do that?” Seena asked, voice tired.

“No idea,” Gran admitted. “Not like I go around chopping off half my body to see if I can sew it back on. Going to try though. If somebody could put my little dancers in the Shared Storage, I’d appreciate it.”

“Just… not with my pastries,” Yanily said weakly, voice barely more than a whisper even with the party chat.

“Yan!” Seena said. “You’re awake.”

“Wish… I wasn’t,” the spearman responded. “Ouch. Did we win?”

“We… sort of won,” Hiral said. “Maybe, more like we didn’t lose.”

“What happened, anyway?” Seena asked as Gran bobbed over to see to her sister.

“The Archwizard was being kept on our world by some kind of energy on his body. The more power he used – or damage he took from us – the more that energy got consumed. By the time he tried to open the portal to the heart of the sun, he was almost out. I just… snipped off the last of it. That sent him back to wherever he was from.”

“Heart of the sun, huh?” Yan asked. “Is that why I got this achievement?”

“Achievement?” Hiral asked off-handedly while he watched Gran stabilizing their injuries. Oh, right. The notification I got?

Since he couldn’t do anything to help with the healing, Hiral absently opened the blinking notification window in the corner of his vision.

Congratulations. Achievement unlocked – Heart of Enlightment.

Few have witnessed the origin point for solar energy. Fewer yet are still alive to talk about it. You are one of them.

Please access a Raid Interface to unlock class-specific reward.

“Yeah, that about sums up how I feel,” Hiral admitted.

“Think Tomorrow has more planned for us?” Yanily asked, and only silence answered him.

“I… hope not,” Seena finally said after several long seconds. “We’re in no shape to keep fighting. I honestly hope the next thing she says is…”

“Congratulations!” Tomorrow’s narration returned, echoing as if from the sky itself. “I am impressed you managed to survive The Archwizard’s power.”

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“Us too,” Hiral said, eyes turning to the clear blue above him.

“But, let me tell you a secret,” Tomorrow went on. “My simulations aren’t exactly the same as those incredibly basic dungeon things. Don’t get me wrong, those are very impressive for something mostly created by humans. My simulations, though? Didn’t it feel real to you? Like you were actually there?

“That’s because… you were! Sort of. One of the things that makes this world – Genesis – so special, is that it exists on a different timeline than the universe The Archwizard and I come from. No, that doesn’t even explain it properly.

“My timeline, it goes from past to future. Left to right, on an X-axis. Genesis though? For you, it also goes from past to future, but not on the X-axis. Your time moves completely independently from mine – along the Y-axis!

“And that’s not all! Our two times don’t always intersect in the same place. Today for you could be both my past and future, depending on when I cross the boundary.

Picture this, an oscillating wave – you do know what one of those is, don’t you? No? Uh. Then just picture a series of waves on the sea. All different sizes. Some huge. Some small. With deep troughs between them. Going from left to right Then, overlay a vertical line on that.

“Where the wave meets the vertical line is when somebody from my universe visits Genesis.

“Truly amazing, isn’t it?” Tomorrow asked.

“I have… no idea what she just said,” Yanily said into the party chat. “Maybe it’s the concussion. Or being almost dead. It’s too complicated.”

“Ugh,” Tomorrow said. “This means people from any time in my universe – and any place in their own personal histories – can visit your world, and end up in almost any time here. No matter how time passes there, it’s separate. You could meet a younger version of me after you meet an older version. And I’d have no idea we’d met before, because to me, we wouldn’t have met yet.”

“I’m… sure that’s impressive,” Hiral said. “But we’re too tired and hurt to really understand right now. How does that connect to the simulation of The Archwizard that just kicked our asses?”

“Because,” Tomorrow said, a hint of pride in her voice. “It wasn’t entirely a simulation. Using the unique nature of Genesis, I connected your current time to his past, when he visited, and we battled.”

“We fought him instead of you?” Seena asked.

“No,” Tomorrow said. “We both fought him. Now that you’ve completed the trial, he may even remember your battle – though I suspect it will be something like a dream to him. Vague memories. Possible scars, even. He may also have a vendetta against you if you run into him again.”

“I really don’t understand,” Seena said. “How does that even work?”

“You know what? Let’s just chalk it up to timey wimey stuff and call it a day there,” Tomorrow said with a verbal shrug like she was completely giving up on them.

Part of Hiral knew what she was saying was important. Really important. But, his brain was far too clouded at the moment from the constant pain to give it the consideration it deserved. He’d worry about it later. He just didn’t have another choice right now.

“Is that it?” Hiral asked. “Is that all you wanted to show us with this trial?”

“Oh, definitely not,” Tomorrow said. “That was all just to set the stage for what comes next.”

“… Next?” Seena asked hesitantly.

“Don’t worry, that was the end of the audience participation component of this trial. And you passed! Hurrah. Hurray. Huzzah. Rah rah. There, do you feel like you accomplished something?”

“Less so than before, actually,” Hiral said. “If that wasn’t the point of this trial, then what is?”

“This,” Tomorrow said, and there was a sound like somebody snapping their fingers.

The next thing Hiral knew, he was sitting in a remarkably comfortable, reclining chair – instead of on the ground – in a lavish theatre. Arrayed in a line beside him, was the rest of his party. And not just his party, but also the rest of the raid group. Nivian and Ilrolik’s parties were also there, though they didn’t look to be much better off than Seena’s group.

Injuries marred their bodies, Wule looked exhausted, and Devison was clearly missing a foot. Again. Nobody had made it through their battles unscathed.

That said, while none of their injuries had been miraculously healed, they didn’t look to be getting any worse either. Devison’s stump – and Gran’s waist – wasn’t waterfalling blood to soak into the chair. If anything, if felt like the damage to their bodies had been paused.

Even Hiral’s aching solar channels seemed to fade to the background, the solar energy ceasing its movement through him. Runic Regeneration didn’t tick up his health, though he could vaguely still sense the Edicts.

It’s as if our minds have been drawn out of our bodies between seconds.

“Now that we’re all comfortable,” Tomorrow said, her hooded and humanoid form appearing on the stage in front of them. “We’re going to get to the important parts. The reasons you’re here. Literally.

“You see, after my own encounter with The Archwizard.” Tomorrow vanished from the stage, only to be replaced with a version of her and The Archwizard, though they looked to be… people in costumes? Tomorrow’s draconic form was made of draping cloth, with six sets of humanoid legs underneath it, puppeting it across the stage. As for the Beastman, yeah, there were barely-visible cables lifting it into the air to mimic flight.

The… hell?

“Tide and Punishment quickly found me,” Tomorrow continued, The Archwizard vanishing through a pair of thick curtains to get replaced by two more puppeted dragons. “They’d each been forced into combat against the denizens of this world.”

“The Shaleclaw and the elemental?” Hiral guessed, thinking back to the other two weapons the parties had gotten from the Raid Boss. He didn’t get a direct answer – more the sensation of an invisible nod before Tomorrow continued.

“As they arrived, we stared at each other, each wondering if one battle had ended only for another to begin,” Tomorrow said, but the three dragons didn’t immediately attack each other. “Until something… strange happened.

“We talked. For the first time in millennia, we didn’t come to blows. We’d all realized the same thing about the force keeping us on this strange world, the grey energy clinging to our bodies. The more of our own power we used, the more that energy frayed around us. And, once it was gone, so too would we be.

“And, here – on what we would eventually come to call Genesis – we all found our minds opening. None of us wanted to leave, or felt is was worth the risk trying to remove one of the others. So, then and there, we forged a fragile truce. We wouldn’t do anything to hinder the others.

“At that point, I expected us to go our separate ways,” Tomorrow went on, two of the three dragons turning to leave. One remained, though. The Final Tide. “Until Tide spoke up. Until Tide asked for my opinion on something.

“Not a way to bring about the end of all things – like I would’ve expected from that one – but instead about a puzzle that had stumped her. The question – and the puzzle – intrigued me. It was oddly similar to one I’d found long, long ago, and that made me curious. Apparently with nothing better to do, Punishment stuck around as well, offering his own input on the mystery.

“Hours spun on as we discussed.” The three dragons on stage huddled with their faces together as a wooden and painted sun slowly drifted across the stage above them. “Honestly, it might’ve been a lot longer than hours. Time is somewhat relative to immortals, but we eventually noticed the sun setting above us.

“And, as we stirred from our conversation, we realized we weren’t alone.” As Tomorrow said that, others stepped out onto the stage. A man and woman with masks that looked like lizards’ heads. A big lantern with legs waddling quickly to keep it from falling over. A towering man in heavy armor with the awkward gait of somebody walking on stilts. A large spider, that was really somebody in a completely black, tight, bodysuit under a puppet with poles moving the eight legs. A woman in an orange robe, painted like feathers, with large paper ‘wings’ over her arms, who walked across the stage and occasionally paused in striking poses before moving on again. Even somebody dressed in a long, black jacket – an extra set of arms dangling from his sides – and black wings stretched woodenly from his back. Curved horns rested across his head.

Amin Thett, it has to be.

“We weren’t the only ones who’d been drawn to this world,” Tomorrow said. “Some of the newcomers I recognized. Some I didn’t. One, I was pretty sure, was even dead, and yet stood before me. These were some of the other greatest powers where we came from.

“Much like with Tide and Punishment, to meet one of them was to do battle. On this day, instead, they joined us on the discussion of the puzzle Tide had found.

“On this day, the first council of the Progenitors occurred.”